There’s nothing moderate or reasonable about Senate Bill 310

Governor John Kasich will ultimately decide the fate of Ohio’s clean energy future. God help us all (courtesy of the Toledo Blade).

Ever since Senator Troy Balderson (R-Zainesville) first introduced SB 310 back in March, the bill’s proponents have continually tried to paint themselves as unbiased, reasonable actors who are just working to defend the best interests of Ohio’s consumers.

They routinely emphasize the supposed uncertainty around the effects of the state’s energy efficiency and renewable energy standards and point to an Energy Mandates Study Committee, which will analyze the standards during the two-year freeze and propose potential changes, as proof that they are reasonable actors who are standing up for ratepayers.

Senate President Keith Faber (R-Celina) told the Columbus Dispatch “What we want to do as a legislature is put procedures in place that are based on evidence and science.” He added, “We’ve spent $1.1 billion since 2009 on energy efficiency. … I’m not quite sure what we’ve gotten out of it.” The Study Committee is supposedly intended to solve this (non) issue.

Senator Frank LaRose (R-Akron) went so far as to claim that his work to “moderate” the bill provided that he was a true statesman.

And Governor John Kasich, who will ultimately decide whether Ohio continues to move forward or dives headlong into its coal-fired past, released a joint statement with Sen. Faber that read, “By temporarily holding at our current level while problems are ironed out, we keep the progress we’ve made, ensure we steadily grow new energy sources and preserve affordable energy prices for both businesses and consumers.”

So, given the centrality of this Study Committee to the GOP’s claims that they acting reasonably and in the best interest of Ohioans, you would think it would include experts on the issue and take a sober, neutral approach to its task. Yeah, not quite.

Section 3. It is the intent of the General Assembly to ensure that customers in Ohio have access to affordable energy. It is the intent of the General Assembly to incorporate as many forms of inexpensive, reliable energy sources in the state of Ohio as possible. It is also the intent of the General Assembly to get a better understanding of how energy mandates impact jobs and the economy in Ohio and to minimize government mandates. Because the energy mandates in current law may be unrealistic and unattainable, it is the intent of the General Assembly to review all energy resources as part of its efforts to address energy pricing issues.

Therefore, it is the intent of the General Assembly to enact legislation in the future, after taking into account the recommendations of the Energy Mandates Study Committee, that will reduce the mandates in sections 4928.64 and 4928.66 of the Revised Code and provide greater transparency to electric customers on the costs of future energy mandates, if there are to be any.

Setting aside the fact that the bill’s authors clearly don’t understand how to use the word “impact” correctly, the intent of this section is quite clear. The Ohio GOP wants us to believe they just plan to “study” the state’s clean energy standards to see if they can decipher their effects and, if necessary, make changes. But, as you can see, the writing is already on the wall.

SB 310 predetermines the outcome of the Study Committee, and it inevitably guarantees that the standards will be watered down heavily during the two-year freeze, if not killed entirely. The bill calls them “unrealistic and unattainable” and lays out the GOP’s intention to “minimize government mandates” and “reduce” them going forward. The goal is blatantly transparent.

There’s nothing fair or reasonable about SB 310, no matter how much its proponents bloviate. As Terry Smith said so well in Sunday’s edition of The Athens News,

Anyone familiar with the arguments of climate-change deniers will see some of their rhetorical flourishes in Balderson’s vague references to gimmicks and slogans gussied up with a gratuitous fealty to science. That’s their perverse way of casting doubt on the overwhelming global scientific consensus that climate change is happening now, is getting worse, and is mainly caused by human-kind’s burning of fossil fuels.

Plus, as critics of S.B. 310 have pointed out and the utilities themselves have admitted, money spent on energy-efficiency standards will recoup twice as much in savings.

If Ohio wants to continue sliding backward into the darkness, while its elected representatives happily collect rent from the fossil-fuel and electric utility industries, and their allies in the dark world of Koch, it makes perfect sense to double down on coal- and gas-fired electric power and flea-market-level severance taxes for oil and gas.

You almost wish the GOP leadership had the guts to come out and admit their true intentions. But they know that, if they did, Ohioans would revolt. So they hide behind their false facades of reasonableness and rationality so they can keep the money flowing from the fossil fuel industry. It’s worked up to this point, but you can only stem the tide of history for so long.

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What a grand day for science and the environment! As the Brookings Institute just demonstrated last week: “First–assuming reductions in carbon emissions are valued at $50 per metric ton and the price of natural gas is $16 per million Btu or less–nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle have far more net benefits than either wind or solar. This is the case because solar and wind facilities suffer from a very high capacity cost per megawatt, very low capacity factors and low reliability, which result in low avoided emissions and low avoided energy cost per dollar invested.” http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/05/low-carbon-electricity-technologies-frank Let Governor Kasich’s courageous stand be a model for the rest of the country: when armchair environmentalists dictate energy policy the planet suffers! Huzzah!

Perhaps James Hansen really was correct?

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off
fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is
almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”

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About Me

I am a graduate of the MA program in Global Environmental Policy at the American University School of International Service in DC. I live in Cleveland, where I work on air quality, and my writing focuses on issues related to environmental peacebuilding, disaster risk reduction, and climate change, transportation, and urban development. I am a native Clevelander who loves my hometown, despite its many flaws, and wants to work to improve it, rather than simply papering over our challenges.